


52 Things I Hate About You

by jazzypizzaz



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brunt is a wretched conflicted twerp, Episode: s04e25 Body Parts, Funeral, Gen, Quark has more friends than he thought, What's The Opposite of a Fix-It Fic, unrequited qrunt in spirit if not explicitly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26497324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzypizzaz/pseuds/jazzypizzaz
Summary: or, “500 bars of latinum and all I got was this empty feeling inside”Brunt comes to Quark's funeral to collect on his contract bid.  It isn't as satisfying as he thought it'd be.
Relationships: Brunt & Quark (Star Trek)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 19





	52 Things I Hate About You

Brunt is showing off his docked ship to a dabo girl -- so much of her enticingly _clothed_ that he shudders at the eroticism of it -- and idly planning the next escalation of his plan to humiliate Quark, when he gets a call from the FCA for an emergency audit. Apparently there’s allegations of union activity at a Ferengi-owned dilithium mine on a moon of Bolarus V, and it can’t wait for Brunt to finish with Quark.

“Sorry lobelet, but I’ll be back. Don’t fret,” he says to the dabo girl. He tiptoes up to kiss her, but she steps back, pouty. He smirks and hands her a strip of latinum. She smiles and pecks his cheek cheerily. Good company is never cheap, but it is worth it.

Brunt leaves a long vicious holomessage for Quark about what _exactly_ the consequences will be if Quark reneges on his contract, with a few horrid exaggerations thrown in. That ought to keep Quark on his toes until he gets back.

Brunt’s several days out from the station, when he gets the good news pinging on his ship’s computer console.

_Your bid on the Ferengi Futures Exchange has been resolved!_

“Computer, what’s my bank account balance? Access code LatinumIsLife69.” Brunt’s heart pounds with excitement (with dread?). The computer recites a number -- five hundred bars of latinum less.

That wretched little philanthropist actually did it. Quark called Brunt’s bluff.

Quark is dead.

Brunt blinks. Not exactly the ideal outcome -- he’s out five hundred bars and up one strangled corpse -- but still, he won. He beat Quark, humiliated him all the way to the Vault of Eternal Destitution.

Brunt waits for the smug satisfaction he’s expecting to wash over him.

Nothing.

Instead he feels like what he imagines Quark feels like counting profits after a hard day’s bar-tending -- disappointed and vaguely empty.

How Quark _felt_. Past tense.

Ping! Another message from the Ferengi Futures Exchange: _Please await instructions for collecting your newly acquired property._

Brunt fiddles with the bar of latinum around his neck, thinking. Of course he doesn’t feel anything from a computer message. Of course it doesn’t feel real -- he needs to hold the winnings in his hands, to finger the discs of Quark’s body himself. He needs to be in tangible possession of his prize, of Quark.

Brunt's lobes tingle in anticipation.

\---

The funeral’s in the bar, of course, and to Brunt’s surprise it’s _packed_ with people.

Maybe they have outstanding debts to collect with Quark? Brunt smirks until he remembers that those debts will likely be paid with _his_ 500 bars of latinum. Scowling, he takes note of a few surly looking loners on the fringes of the room, but for the most part people look _sad_. Over Quark?! Brunt’s scowl deepens.

In addition to Quark’s family (just as deviant and wretched as Quark was, so their presence is to be expected), there are Bajorans, humans, a few Cardassians, even his legion of Ferengi waiters... All of them apparently there to mourn Quark.

Brunt pats his jacket pocket, comforted by the jingle of bribe money he keeps stashed there -- if it’s all a show, and the mourners are expecting to get more latinum out of Brunt, well he won’t so much hand over a strip. He manages to slip in without drawing attention, maneuvering to the middle of the crowd, away from those who would recognize him.

“What would you like to drink?” a Ferengi waiter asks a nearby human. “Quark would want you to spend money in his bar. To honor him.”

“Of course he would,” curly-haired human scoffs, but then orders two Tellerite whiskeys. He mutters to his lanky friend beside him, “He always wanted us to try them but we never did.”

“‘Can’t beat a good Irish dram,’ that’s what you’d tell him,” the lanky human says. “I regret it now. Better make them doubles and add a good tip. In Quark’s honor.”

Brunt rolls his eyes, and eavesdrops on various other conversations.

A couple of dabo girls are crying in each other’s arms: “He was a shitty boss, but I’m gonna mi-mi-miss him!” and “I won’t be able to wear these earrings again without thinking about how he said it made my lobes look sexy! Waaahhh…”

All around Brunt people drink and commiserate, sharing stories about Quark: how he cheated them at dabo, how always he knew how to mix their Black Holes just the way they liked them, how he flirted with their romantic partners right in front of them, that time he recreated their mother’s groat cake recipe to sell at the bar (and charged them for the “service”), the way he’d always best them at tongo…

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera -- all these people who feel they have a claim to Quark, who laud him for his philanthropic lapses in judgement, who lament how he touched their lives in some small way or another, and it makes Brunt _sick_.

Quark doesn’t belong to them. Don’t they know? Brunt _bought_ Quark.

That tall luscious spotted female that Quark was friends with stands up on the bar and clinks a glass with a spoon to get everyone’s attention. Finally, the funeral will start, and then Brunt can collect his rightful possessions.

“Thank you all for coming. We are gathered here to celebrate the life of Quark. Please, if you haven’t already, pay the entrance fee or at least buy a drink in his honor -- it was explicitly specified in his will for this event. Quark was many things: a proud owner of this bar grill and holosuite emporium, a enterprising businessman, a scoundrel and a dear, uncle of Nog and brother of Rom, but most important, to me anyway, he was my _friend_ \--”

“Waa-- waaaaa-- waaaa-- wait!” Quark’s idiot brother blubbers out between sobs. A tall luscious (and yet again, clothed! non-Ferengi are so perverted) Bajoran woman stands beside him, looking stricken.

The idiot brother -- Rom was it? -- stomps up to the front near Jadzia. “Wait. Theeerrrre’s a _murderer_ in our midst!” Rom waves a dramatic arm around until his pointed finger stops on Brunt. His eyes, red and puffy from crying, sharpen into a glare. “He killed my brother! He doesn’t deserve to be here. He doesn’t deserve to be anywhere, not while my brother is dead. _He doesn’t deserve to live!”_

Muttering and rabble arises from the crowd. There’s a couple snatches of what sound like threats, general grumbling, "he did WHAT?", and “let’s run him out!”

Brunt leers at the crowd, doing his best to ooze the proper arrogance of a FCA liquidator. “As someone who unfortunately had to consort with Quark during his life, I have a right to be here as much as anyone. More in fact, since now I legally _own him_.”

“Aaaand I will own YOU!” Rom growls, which doesn’t even make sense.

Rom launches himself forward. Brunt’s knocked on his ass, wind thumped out of him, with Rom clawing at his face and sobbing all over his expensive Tholian silk shirt. Brunt throws his arms around his head to shield his lobes and tries to kick Rom off, to no avail.

“How many of you paupers have more than one measly bar of latinum to your name?” Brunt shouts while writhing away from Rom. “You should all be _welcoming_ me and my deep pocketbooks with open, acquiescent arms!”

Brunt regrets not rehiring those Nausicaans as bodyguards, but he honestly thought no one would bother attending Quark’s funeral. Since the discs were accounted for, what possessions of Quark would they even bother to auction off? Mugs of synthale? Puh-lease.

“That’s _enough_ ,” says a harsh, gravelly voice. The Changeling constable pulls Rom off of Brunt, shifting one arm to wrap around Rom as a restraint. “Even if he is not welcome here, Brunt has a legal right to collect what he bought.”

Brunt brushes off his suit jacket and holds a hand up to Constable Odo to be helped up. “Thank you. Nice to see someone with a sense of propriety, at least for a non-Ferengi.”

Those sunken alien eyes flash with danger, dark threat condensing within them of exactly what damage a Changeling could be capable if pushed.

Brunt flinches and retracts his hand. He gets to his feet himself, smoothing out his rumpled suit.

“Don’t take this as evidence of a personal acquittal for your barbarism,” Odo spits out with venom. Is it Brunt’s imagination, or did Odo get larger, sharper, more looming? Brunt tries to slink away, but the crowd presses in around him. “You have a legal right to come to this station to collect the discs without injury and not a second longer. You will not linger around to gloat, you will not stay for the funeral, and you will not so much as utter another word, or I will charge you with anything I can from disturbing the peace to inciting a riot. And when you do finally skulk off this station, I will no longer have jurisdiction over your bodily integrity, so if I were you I would fly far far away and never return to this sector. _Is that clear?_ ”

There’s a ringing silence in the bar which is broken only by Rom’s whimpering.

Brunt swallows. He holds up a finger to indicate he has a question.

“What?” Odo growls.

“This may have been an oversight on your part, but I would like to press charges for assault.” Brunt points to Rom, who gasps.

“Why- you - that’s- the nerve --!”

“Excuse me?!” the tall female, Jadzia, still standing on the bar cuts through Rom’s incoherent spluttering. She searches the crowd with a look of confusion on her face. “Did anyone here see Rom assault Brunt? Anyone?”

The Lurian on the bar stool shakes his head.

“Not me!” shouts a nearby human.

“I certainly didn’t!” says a Bajoran standing next to Brunt.

Brunt whips around, searching for an ally, and finally spots a particular human in Starfleet red. “You -- you’re captain of the station right? Put an end to this madness.”

“A man has _died_ , because of you,” the captain bites out in sharp staccato. Brunt jumps. “Have a little respect for his bereaved. Conduct your business _, quickly_ , and leave my station, _or so help me_.”

Jadzia shrugs at Brunt. “Not a single witness to this so-called assault.”

Brunt glances to Odo. “He tore my new shirt, look --”

“You are not welcome here,” Odo snarls. He reaches behind the bar and heaves up a box. “Take this and go. This is what this was all about, right? Are you happy now? Are you satisfied?”

Brunt scowls. He loads up his satchel with the discs, one-by-one while the hundred or so onlookers glare at him in a silence as thick as the clouds gathering for a _globbening_ rainstorm. There are fifty-two of the discs, the total sum of a failed businessman and utterly worthless in resale value. Fifty-two discs clinking together as he stacks them, all that’s left of a destitute, desperate, deviant, disgusting excuse for a Ferengi male.

“Of course,” Brunt sneers. “Of course I’m satisfied, a festering tumor on the lobes of Ferengi society has been removed.”

The satchel hoisted over his shoulder is heavier than he thought it’d be.

He walks out the door and back to his ship alone.

He heads back to Ferenginar alone.

Back at his home, he enjoys a quiet evening alone, stacking the discs in what he thinks of as his trophy room. He glances around at the spoils of a liquidator’s job well done, all the odds and ends he’s collected from his duties over the years, nicely arranged in his expensive, fashionable, cavernous house that he has all to himself.

“Of course I’m happy.” Brunt’s voice echoes through the room. There’s no one around to contradict him. “Without that pathetic weak-lobed reprobate alive to pervert good Ferengi values? Of course I am.”

He has no idea what to do with himself next.


End file.
